Colt's head was throbbing.

  It was dark, but not night-in-the-woods dark. A different kind of dark. The air didn't move at all, no gusts of wind, not even a faint breeze. A few little lights blinked somewhere out there, tiny and strange, like sparks that refused to fall.

  He lifted a hand and felt around.

  There was cloth under his palm, it was soft and smooth in a way that wasn't a bedroll or a blanket from home. His fingers slid along until they hit the edge of something firm underneath. A bed.

  He patted at his shirt and belt before he even thought about it. No gun. No knife. He was sitting here empty-handed in a place he didn't know, and that made his throat close up.

  "Where am I?" he said.

  He sat up slow and listened.

  He heard a click off to his right.

  Then the lights came on.

  They were bright as hell, and they hit his eyes like he'd looked straight at the sun. Colt threw an arm over his face and turned his head away. His eyes watered and he blinked hard behind his sleeve.

  A low hum started up, then another, then more, until it sounded like the whole room was coming alive around him. Something whirred. Something else made a fast ticking sound and then stopped. He could feel the hum more than he could hear it.

  Colt's chest rose and fell too fast.

  Right in the middle of it, the last thing he saw outside came back hard.

  He saw Clay on his feet, running. He saw Clay stumble. He saw that arrow in Clay's chest, the black shaft sticking out, and he saw Clay's face go pale as his legs started to give out.

  "No," Colt said, and his voice came out thin. "Clay... no."

  He shut his eyes and the rest came back too, all jammed together. Black shapes around him. Violet eyes in the trees. Himself standing there with that box in his hand, surrounded. Throwing it down. Stomping it. The violet flash under his boot.

  Then nothing.

  He sucked in a breath.

  Clay could be bleeding out in the dirt right now, dying alone in the woods.

  A word floated up from the dark. Not a word he knew. One he'd seen right before everything went out.

  Initi... intial...

  Protocol.

  He tried to sound it out, but it came out broken. "Pro... to... col."

  "What were those words?" he asked the empty room.

  He squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

  Pa had been trying to teach him letters when there was time. Colt could spell his own name if he went slow. That was about as far as he'd gotten. Most days, you didn't have time for learning. You had chores. You had work. You had food to hunt and wood to cut. That was the deal.

  Colt opened his eyes.

  He wasn't in the woods. He wasn't anywhere he knew.

  The walls were smooth and white, and they didn't look like wood or stone. The floor felt cold through his boots. The air smelled clean, like it didn't belong to the outside world. No smoke. No horse. No dirt. It smelled like nothing, and that made his skin crawl.

  He looked around, trying to grab onto anything that made sense.

  Metal shelves ran along one side, all empty. Some cabinets sat in the corner. On the far wall was a big flat square that he thought might be a window at first, because it was the right shape, but it didn't show sky or trees. It just sat there, dark and shiny, like a picture of night with no stars.

  Black cords ran across the floor like thin ropes, slick and strange. They led to a table with another one of those flat squares on it. In front of the table sat a chair on wheels.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Colt stared at the chair.

  He swung his legs off the bed and planted his boots on the floor. His hands were still shaking a little. He took one slow breath and tried to get his head straight.

  The room had three doors. One was smaller and skinnier than the other two. None of them looked like anything from home. The handles were too smooth, and the seams around the frames were perfectly straight.

  He went for the small door first. It looked like it might be a closet or a storage room, and he wanted to clear the nearest thing before he touched anything else.

  He walked to it and put his hand on the handle. It was cold. A green dot lit up next to it. He pulled.

  The door opened into dark.

  Colt leaned in and stuck his head through.

  A light snapped on overhead. The room was empty and white. Little shelves ran along the walls, but they were bare. No tools. No boxes. Nothing. The place looked like nobody had ever set foot in it.

  Colt stayed in the doorway and listened, holding his breath.

  Just an empty room.

  He backed out and shut the door.

  "Where in God's green earth am I?”

  He raised his chin and yelled, "Hello! Anyone here?"

  He waited.

  Nothing answered him.

  Colt rubbed his palms on his pants. His fingers still felt stiff.

  "Okay," he muttered. "This is strange as hell."

  Colt froze.

  The flat square on the table.

  It flashed bright and ran white across it, then shifted to blue. Lines crawled over it, and words started to form in rows.

  He looked at the square until his eyes burned. His hand went to his belt again out of habit, and when he felt nothing there his gut dropped all over again.

  He swallowed and walked to the table anyway, because standing there staring wasn't getting him anywhere.

  He grabbed the chair and it rolled on him the second he touched it. Colt jerked it back, then sat down careful. The chair slid a little under him, and he caught the edge of the table before he drifted away from it.

  The screen kept changing. More lines and more words he couldn't read.

  Something moved in the tabletop beside his arm.

  A piece of metal slid out of a slot, shaped like a plug. It stopped at the edge of the table like it was meant to be picked up.

  Colt looked at it, then at the screen, then back at it.

  He reached for the plug.

  The second his fingers touched it, pain shot through his wrist and up his forearm. His hand cramped hard, fingers curling on their own like they'd been pulled tight.

  "Agh—" Colt jerked back and dropped it. The plug clacked against the table and hit the floor.

  He grabbed his wrist with his other hand and sucked in a breath through his teeth.

  He stared at the inside of his wrist.

  The skin there looked scrunched up, folded into a straight line like it had been creased.

  Colt stood up fast enough that the chair rolled behind him again.

  "Whoa," he said.

  He touched the line with a fingertip. It felt like skin. He could feel his pulse under it, faint but there. But there was an edge under the skin too. A seam.

  Colt’s heart started to beat harder.

  He would have noticed something like this. He would have known. Eighteen years he'd lived in his own skin and he'd never once seen a seam in his wrist.

  His throat worked like he was trying to swallow a rock.

  He pinched the skin and pulled up.

  He gasped.

  The skin lifted like a flap.

  Under it was a hole. Not a wound. Not raw meat. A clean hole with metal inside it, and the shape matched the plug on the floor like they were made for each other.

  Colt held the flap up and stared. His hands were shaking still, he looked around the room like something in here was going to explain it, like the walls were going to open up and tell him what the hell was happening.

  "Where the hell am I?" he whispered.

  He looked down at the plug on the floor.

  "What the fuck is this shit?” He said while pushing on the metal hole in his wrist.

  The shapes matched.

  Colt stood there a long moment, breathing hard, staring at the hole in his own arm. Part of him wanted to run. Part of him wanted to scream. But Clay was out there somewhere, maybe dying, maybe already dead, and standing here shaking wasn't going to change that.

  He bent down, grabbed the plug off the floor, and brought it up to his wrist. His fingers shook as he lined it up with the hole.

  He pushed.

  It slid in clean.

  For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then something in him clicked.

  His arm went stiff, not by choice. The hum in the room changed pitch, and the lights seemed to press down harder on his eyes. Colt sucked in a breath and tried to pull the plug back out, but his hand wouldn't listen.

  The screen in front of him flashed white. Then blue. Then big words filled the whole thing.

  PROJECT: LAST STAND

  Colt stared at it, and he didn't know how, but he knew what it said.

  "Project... Last Stand," he whispered.

  Colt kept staring at the screen.

  The words were still there. He kept trying to sound them out until they made sense.

  PROJECT: LAST STAND

  He read them again. Then again.

  "Project... Last Stand," he said under his breath. "What the hell does that mean?"

  Nothing answered him.

  The room kept humming. The lights stayed bright.

  The screen blinked once and went black.

  Colt leaned forward in the chair, like he could pull the words back out of it.

  New lines formed.

  ACTIVATING F.A.U...

  Colt read it slow. "F—A—U."

  He looked around the room. "Activating what?"

  A sound came from the floor near the base of the bed. A quiet clicking noise.

  Colt turned his head.

  A circle he hadn't noticed before lit up in the floor, a clean ring of light that started to spin. The light moved fast, chasing itself around like a wheel.

  Colt stood up so quick the chair rolled and bumped the table.

  The circle brightened.

  Something rose up out of it. Not like a man climbing, but like a platform lifting. A shape came with it, short, thin, built like a person but all metal. Its joints looked clean. Its head was smooth, no face Colt could read, just hard lines and plates and one small light where eyes ought to be.